Guest: Ngaire Blankenberg- Director, National Museum of African Art Founded as a small museum on Capitol Hill in 1964, the museum became a part of the Smithsonian in 1979 and, in 1987, it moved to its current location on the National Mall.

Guest: Luke Radolf- Luke Rudolf was born in 1977 in London where he lives and works. Rudolf’s paint-ings juggle digital and traditional mark-making to create enigmatic figures entan-gled in a kinetic matrix of lines and planes. While there are recognisably modernist elements, Rudolf tests the limits of painting by engaging digital techniques. Exhibitions include Screen Space, Slate Projects, London in (2014), Luke Rudolf, Kate MacGarry, (2012), Newspeak: British Art Now pt.2, Saatchi Gallery, Lon-don, TAPEWORM, Neon Parc, Melbourne, Luke Rudolf, Kate MacGarry, London and The Library of Babel / In and Out of Place, 176/Zabludowicz Collection, Lon-don, all 2010. https://www.lukerudolf.com

Guest: Nelisiwe Xaba- Nelisiwe Xaba was born and raised in Soweto and is currently based in Jo-hannesburg, South Africa. She is a celebrated contemporary dance chore-ographer whose multi-media projects tour extensively and have brought her international acclaim. She collaborates with artists in and outside of her me-dium. Most notably, with fashion designer Carlo Gibson of Strangelove, cho-reographer Kettly Noel and film director Mocke J van Vueren for which they received a 2013 FNB Art Fair prize. Her body of work is politically driven and challenges stereotypes of the black female body and cultural notions of gen-der mainstreams. Xaba is currently represented by the Goodman Gallery in South Africa.

Ngaire Blankenberg is the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, A premiere museum devoted to the arts of Africa.  The museum’s collection of more than 12,000 objects represents nearly every area of the continent of Africa and contains a variety of media and art forms. Previously, Blankenberg was a consultant for museums and cultural destina-tions around the world, finding innovative ways to connect cultural resources to new audiences and -reimagining the museums of the future. She has advised clients on concept development, operations and business planning, programming, stakeholder and public engagement and more. Her recent consulting clients include the National Gallery of Canada, Superblue, Museum and Archive of the Constitution at the Hill (Johannesburg), the Ca-nadian Museum for Human Rights, MEG—Musée d’ethnographie de Ge-nève, Olympique de Marseille football club and other global and local institu-tions. In 2017, Blankenberg served as the head of content and strategy for Kossmanndejong, an Amsterdam-based design agency where she helped museum clients shape their interpretive approach to exhibitions, strategic planning, new business development and content development. Previously, she spent eight years (2008–2016) at Lord Cultural Resources as a principal consultant. From 2015 to 2016, she served as the director of Lord Cultural Resources in Europe. In addition to her extensive work consulting for museums and cultural herit-age sites, Blankenberg is an award-winning TV and documentary producer and director, public speaker and a published author. Blankenberg holds a Master of Arts in media and cultural studies from the University of Natal, in Durban, South Africa, and a bachelor’s degree in jour-nalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She succeeds Augustus Casely-Hayford, who was director of the museum until March 2020. Deborah Mack from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has served as the interim director of the museum.